My Poly Life Lesson # 1 — Insecurity

AKA Still Feeling Like That Unpopular Kid

I wasn’t ever the popular kid growing up.

I was more the one who was teased for being “too fat” or “too ugly”. I heard all too often about how I wasn’t going to be loved for who could love someone so ugly, how would someone want to have sex with someone as fat as I was, and how essentially I wasn’t worth much as a person.

I experienced the pain of crushes that never returned my feelings but once word got out that I liked them they joined in the chorus of torture.

Pretending to like me back.

Setting me up for the inevitable reveal that I was naive yet again for thinking that someone I thought was worthy might actually be interested in me, see me as worthy and take a chance on what I have to offer the world.

If I’ve learned anything from my youth it’s I don’t get off on public humiliation as much of a masochist as I am.

So when the topic of opening up to poly came up in my 20 year marriage I’d be lying if I didn’t state honestly that it seemed that inner child of mine, a product of being teased, put down, cheated on, judged, dumped, never liked back, set up and just plain lied to, came out in full force.

It was like a tidal wave, actually tsunami would likely be a better way to describe it, all of sudden overwhelmed in ways I hadn’t felt in a while. Waiting for the joke to be played out only this time with my husband as the culprit, waiting for the I never loved you scene to play out and in the back of my mind playing out the next steps I would need to take to rebuild my life.

I was preparing for the heartbreak of finding out again I was the butt of the joke, that it was going to be proven that no one could love me.

Our first adventures in poly didn’t do anything to help with my struggles in how I was feeling nor that I felt like I was a cosmic joke to the universe.

Now I understand that self esteem is just that and that it comes from the self but when I have to work on building it from the ground up all while navigating a new relationship dynamic, including trying to decide if it was a dynamic I truly felt was for me, it was overwhelming. I hadn’t really learned to love myself in my adult years and I was now having to look in the mirror at myself and all I could see was the negative.

The extra pounds, the stretch marks, the size of my jeans, the grey in my hair, the wrinkles on my face, the chronic illness and those shortcoming of being human including my temper, my annoying quirks and the large and sinking fear that those voices from the past were right.

I am ugly.

I am unlovable.

I am not worthy.

No one is going to want you.

No one actually likes you.

I am disposable.

It’s quite the chorus singing in my head over and over and over again. What sucks is that it always seems to be the louder chorus over the voices telling me the good things about myself and while I would constantly engage in a mirror conversation like Stuart Smalley. You know I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it people like me I never really believed it.

Except if you know me you know doggone it isn’t really in my vocabulary.

I never realized how deep the pool of my insecurity went until poly, I never had to look at it after all I’d proven folks wrong hadn’t I? I’d found someone who loves me, finds me sexy and attractive, sees all the good things that I’m often told exists but that I don’t see in myself often.

Thus began the long work of having to love myself which reading it typed out sounds like a kitschy 80’s self help book on tape my mom probably encouraged me to listen to. The issue though with learning to love yourself is that you also have to learn to like the things about you that you hate and that others point out to you in negative ways.

To see the total package and accept that you don’t have to actually love everything about yourself to like yourself.

There is also the struggle of having to take ownership of your own feelings instead of putting the onus on others. It’s not on my husband, my partner, my friends, my children or any future partners to navigate and soothe my inner demons. It’s on me to own them, communicate them and eventually with time and care settle them in such a way that they are managed.

I think I found this to be the hardest part because I’ve found that it is always easier when it is someone else’s fault instead of having to accept that the responsibility is all ours.

Especially because, as I’ve now learned, even if my partners did jump through all my hoops, spent every minute of the day entertaining my asshole brain by telling me over and over and over again how much they value me in every way it still isn’t enough. Because it’s not coming from within, from me.

Personal responsibility…what a bitch.

So I had to do the work of learning to like myself, not fall madly in love with myself, not speak affirmations in the mirror everyday but genuinely like myself. The good parts, the bad parts, learn my value to myself.

I’d love to bullshit you with tales of how easy it was and boom overnight I was completely confident but the work and time it took would take longer than an 80’s movie inspired montage could show.

It was hard. It was hard to look past the bullshit of the voices of my past and see who I really am, not who I’ve been told I am. After all shouldn’t I know myself better than anyone? Well if this is true why am I letting people tell me who I am, what my value is, what I give to the world as a benefit?

It’s been a few years since that initial conversation and honestly, I can say that I do like myself most of the time but I’ve also learned that when there is insecurity to unpack the why of it, dismantle it and the best way to share it with those I love in such a way that I still own that these are my feelings but they can support me while I feel them and navigate them.

Like most evolutionary growth it took time to get here. I’m glad I’m here though because on the other side of things it’s pretty good and I’m better for learning to like myself enough to dismiss when insecurity turns it’s eye on me.